All Guy

At the beginning of the Exploring China school Trip to Moganshan, everybody in year 9 met at the school campus at 6:00 am for check in, loaded the buses and left for the train station. It was a 5 hour train ride to Shanghai, and a 2 hour bus ride to arrive at our destination.

When we arrived to our final destination, we unpacked and did a little compass orientation activity around the little village we were in. We listened to speeches by our trip leaders of schedules and upcoming activities after dinner and then went to bed. The next morning mostly everybody was up early.

After some pictures and breakfast, we separated into permanent groups and separated to do different activities. The first two activities that my group did were cooking and basket weaving, in the Moganshan way.

The next day, the day before we left, we hiked the whole day, it was fun. We hiked up two mountains, and hiked on the road for 1 hour.

The next set of pictures were a recent Young Mens camp out in a village near the Great Wall. It was very cold and beautiful with all the trees changing to autumn colors.

We had a half hour hike up to the wall from our camping spot, we had to carry everything during the long hike, so we tried to eat most of the food for dinner the night before.

Point 14 was the first tower we reached. On the top there were a lot of camera people taking shots of the beauty around us. Our five person group had two young men, and three leaders, one of the young men leaders did a similar camp/hike trip at the wall 3 years earlier. Point 14 was were they slept. If you faced the little village we stayed at on top of 14, on the left, the mountains were filled with low clouds and pollution. On the right it was the exact opposite. It was clean and had fresh air.

                                                       
                                                        

This was the steepest section of the wall we hiked. Slippery stone on a steep angle. We almost pulled out a tarp to sit on to slide down the wall. You had to hug the wall with all your might and edge slowly down.

We hiked all the day from our camping spot all the way to the restored part of the wall. We took the famous toboggan slide down after a desperate bathroom break at the wall. Before we left in the didi, we had several hamburgers or chicken sandwiches at Burger King.

By, Guy

Mongolia

This story started 20 years ago when Lane served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Mongolia.  Once we learned we would be moving to China we knew one of our first trips would be to Mongolia specifically in July, as that is the time of their big national celebration.

Photo below shows the missionaries at an orphanage.  Can you spot Lane?  He looks like one of the kids himself.

Find him yet?  He is on the right, ⬆ there.  

Now for the rest of the story, which can't continue without introducing a very special lady.

This is Pujee (pronounced Pooh Jay).  She is a wonderful, charitable, fun lady.  Our trip wouldn't have been so fabulous or successful without her!  She planned our itinerary, purchased tickets in advance, found us the cheapest apartment (across the street from hers), booked our ger, drove us around each day, was our tour guide, cooked a few meals, picked us up and dropped us off at the train station, airport, respectfully, and played grandma to the boys, (I think they ate every piece of candy and gum she owned).

20 ish years ago this lady lived in an apartment building that also housed missionaries.  Everyday she noticed them crossing the street to another building (the Mission Home, the administrative headquarters for the mission).  One day she saw two Elders trying to get a taxi.  Now in those days anyone with a car was a "taxi", there weren't taxi companies and there weren't many who owned a car.  So she eagerly picked them up being curious as to who they were and what they were doing.  A few days later the Elders showed up on her door (after she had given them her contact information of course).  

Lane helped teach her about the Gospel for months.  She was baptized and then began spreading the word.  Pujee has brought multitudes to the Gospel.  Even while we were visiting her she was busy reaching out to others one way or another.  She has the honor of being the first senior missionary and temple serving missionary from Mongolia.  When she joined the church there were just a few branches, now there are two stakes.  Which basically means there are enough members in Mongolia now to have numerous congregations.  You would be hard pressed to name a Mongolian member she does not know!  

Enough back story!  On to the trip!

 Oh wait, one more tidbit of back story.  We had started planning this trip but with Duncan becoming ill we thought we were going to have to cancel.  Basically one week before we left we decided to go.  Which meant that flights had gone up and were hard to find, so we opted to take a 27 hour train ride.

Train station in Beijing

We're off!!!!!

Looking back at the end of our train.

Nap time!

Boys jumped out to "cheese it" while stopped at a station.

Around 9 pm we reached the boarder where our train was dismantled car by car, taken to a warehouse lifted up and the wheels changed to a new width.  To keep armies from invading, Russians and Mongolians built different sized railroad tracks.  They finished the process around 2 am and we were on our way.

Naadam

We arrived just hours after the opening ceremonies for Naadam, the national festival.  We quickly dropped off our stuff at our new apartment and went to see the fun.

Wrestling

Wrestler in the middle of the picture with a blue bikini look.  Big screens set up around town allowed everyone to stay updated on the wrestling.  The winner becomes one of Mongolia's biggest celebrities.  After winning they strut while flapping their arms like wings.

 

Archery

Judges raised their hands with an elaborate up and down swinging motion as the arrow hits the targets.   

Amber and Drake hidden amongst the onlookers.

Shagai

Finger flicking one bone to knock down down a row of bones.  Think marbles and bowling.

Our second day was spent watching,

Horse races.

One year old race, meaning the horses are one year old, the children riding are 7-9.  All horses are checked to make sure they really are Mongolian horses, if not they are booted from the race.  Even with half the horses disqualified there was a multitude of equestrians.

Our winners.  The officials ride next to the horses as they cross the finish line.  Nose to nose and neck to neck, we still don't know who won.

Drake had the most fun playing in the dirt.

Ever watchful for passing horses and riders who went where ever they fancied.

Score!  We saw the lucky white camel and couldn't leave without Duncan and Grahm getting a picture.

Fair

Photo bomb!  Here I was trying to take a picture of the horse and all the boys ran into the frame. ;)